We take a look at fundamental principles that operate when social and/or regional varieties of English are in contact with each other or with other languages. We take a historical look at English and explore various contact settings which have shaped its development, from contact with Old Norse, Latin and Norman French to the present day. We discuss patterns of bilingualism and multilingualism, that is when speakers use two or more languages in their everyday lives. As the product of migration and colonization, different kinds of English have emerged in different locations around the world. We learn how new dialects emerge as a product of new-dialect formation and how contact-derived varieties such as pidgins and creoles develop under conditions of language contact, with emphasis on different theories of origins. Finally, we discuss the so-called Global Englishes which have emerged as a product of second-language learning around the world.

Chapter 7 concludes this book by summarizing its content and highlighting how the so-called “creole-like” features detected for the AHLAs can be better explained in terms of interface-constrained advanced SLA processes, which were subsequently nativized and conventionalized by following generations of speakers. Likewise, this chapter stresses the importance of these Afro-Hispanic vernaculars to linguistic theory by showing how these contact varieties can offer both a window into possible L2 instantiations of UG as well as an ideal testing ground for formal hypotheses (Sessarego 2014a), which have primarily been built on standardized language data.